YEATS, W. B.

£4,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington

The Poems. First edition thus, number 196 of 375 copies signed by the poet, comprising his complete poems and a variorum of his textual changes. Throughout the 1930s, Yeats worked scrupulously to collect, revise, arrange, and edit his poetic corpus for a deluxe edition, to be published by Macmillan. This project was ended by his death and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. Yeats's widow, Georgie, oversaw the work's publication, using Yeats's proofs and the limitation leaves signed by the poet before his death. This edition is now regarded as definitive.

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